


Missed Connection

by Jeanvalvernairdienjoleponius



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Eiffel accidentally meets Anne and doesn't know it, Eiffel apologizes for one in his gosh diddly darned life, Gen, Post-Canon, Somehow both Hotelka and Anne are in the same town and it's a miracle, Spoilers for up to episode 61, well this sure turned angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 11:26:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13997313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeanvalvernairdienjoleponius/pseuds/Jeanvalvernairdienjoleponius
Summary: Eiffel meets Anne in a grocery store by accident and has no idea who she is.





	Missed Connection

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this is from the discord, specifically Annie and Lesk and random people saying things. Since this has Anne in it, it also has ASL. I don't know ASL, so I had to rely on Google and guesswork. Please correct any mistakes I may have made.

Douglas Eiffel didn’t understand a lot of things. He didn’t really know the rules of the places where he went, he didn’t understand the pop culture references the people around him made, and he especially didn’t understand why people reacted the way they did to certain things. He didn’t know, for instance, that it was not normal for someone to understand more than four languages. What he did know was that Renée had taught him far more than English. He knew that he had used to know a lot of things and a lot of people, and now he didn’t. It made it hard for him to try and work his way through life like a normal human being. He could tell people that he’d had amnesia, but he’d been through so much more than that, and he knew that he would probably never get any of the memories back.

He had started over as a new person.

Things had been hard, but his progress was good. He was living in a house. He understood the rules of the house and the rules of the people in it. He had listened to his logs. Hera and Jacobi were even (slowly, mind you) chipping away at the pop culture references he made. Past him was pretty funny.

The world was not kind to someone who didn’t understand it.

Often, he’d find himself saying something he wasn’t supposed to-- something that was offensive or rude in some way he hadn’t been sure about. With the Hephaestus crew it was fine, because they understood. When it was with someone who didn’t know him that well, it was a nightmare.

Needless to say, he didn’t get out that much.

Not to say that the crew didn’t try. They wanted him to see the world, to make new experiences and new friends, and to get comfortable with himself. He wanted that too. But it was hard. Eventually Minkowski had given up on him bugging everyone in the house and put him on grocery shopping duty.

“Minimal human interaction. All you need to know is how to read signs and contain your impulse buying. It should be easy enough. Even for you.” She nudged him, and he smiled.

“Alright, I guess. Do I have to pay for it? You know I have no money.” 

“No, Doug, don’t be an idiot,” Renée chided, handing him a wallet full of money. “I trust you to do this, don’t let me down.”  
“Aye-aye, commander.” He gave her a two-fingered fake salute, just to annoy her, and went out the front door to find his way to the store.

Douglas jogged to the store without a problem. He brought reusable bags at Koudelka’s insistence--”Do you know what plastic bags do to the environment?”-- and kept strictly to the list of the things he was given. Most of his time was spent wandering the store aimlessly, wondering whether maybe, just maybe, if he walked up and down the cereal aisle enough, he just might find the cereal he was looking for. 

He wandered aimlessly throughout the store, headphones in, jamming out to some music he had on his iPod but didn’t recognize. Either old him or Renée, whoever had made the playlist, had some pretty rocking taste in music. He didn’t even notice that he was just walking back and forth between the same two aisles over and over again.

What he did notice, eventually, was that he was passing the same girl over and over again. And, that she was pretty young to be on her own. And, that she wasn’t looking up from the floor. 

This, despite his general lack of social skills, struck Eiffel as odd. He circled his way around the aisles a couple more times, and, sure enough, she was still standing there each time. Staring. 

Eiffel walked up to her. 

“Hello?” He asked, not really looking at her while he pretended to pick something off of the shelf.

She didn’t react.

“Hello?” He tried again, louder that time. Again, she didn’t respond.

Eiffel wasn’t sure what to do in this situation. He knew it would be rude to start a conversation with a random stranger, but if she were in trouble somehow he couldn’t stand to let her just stand there when he could be doing something about it. He needed to get her attention, but he couldn’t just touch her on the shoulder or say ‘hey’ really loudly, could he? Maybe he could wave? But, no, that would be rude too. He stopped, completely stumped, staring off into the endless cereal boxes before him. 

He heard someone clear their throat next to him. Snapping out of it, he turned his head, and saw the little girl signing something. She brought her fingers in and up, then splayed them out. 

_Lost_ , she was signing.

 _You here with someone you?_ , he signed back, relieved that Renée had taught him ASL. 

_Yes._

_I help you?_

_Yes._

She offered him her hand, and he took it, abandoning his shopping cart and the Post. They travelled in silence, with Douglas having pulled out his headphones so that he could try and spot whoever this mystery girl was shopping with. 

Even though he had no idea what that person was supposed to look like.

Every once in a while, he would look down at the girl whose hand he was holding, and try and remember if he’d seen her before. Granted, even if he had, he would have no idea if he knew her, but there was always the slimmest chance that they’d met in some past life. She didn’t seem to be hearing, but she didn’t have hearing aids, so perhaps she never expected to be hearing again. She had beautiful curly hair, sprouting from her head to far past her shoulders, and appeared to be about elementary school age. She didn’t seem to be all that scared, despite the fact that she was apparently lost and separated from her caretaker in a grocery store. Maybe this happened somewhat often? He shivered as they weaved through the frozen aisles, and he lost his train of thought. 

They reached the last aisle in the store and they still hadn’t found whoever it was that mystery girl was looking for. She let go of Eiffel’s hand and turned away from him, taking a heavy breath in. He could see tears welling up in her eyes. He couldn’t stand that. Mustering up all of his comedy skills, he leaned on thin air, yawning and pretending to check the time on a watch that didn’t exist. This gained a chuckle from her. Encouraged, he rubbed his eyes, and acted shocked when they focused on her, jumping back a little bit and cowering into himself, as if afraid. The girl hugged herself, twisting from side to side, the tears starting to go away. 

_You arrive here how?_ He asked, pretending that he had no idea where she’d come from. She simply smiled and took his hand.

_My name A-N-N-E._

_My name D-O-U-G-L-A-S._

They rounded their way down aisle 6 when the girl let go of his hand and ran towards someone. A woman down the aisle gasped, holding out her arms. Anne ran into them, smiling. When the woman picked up her daughter and spun her around, her eyes locked on Doug and she froze in her tracks, mouth slightly open in shock and awe.

Doug was a bit too far to tell, but he was fairly sure she looked outraged at seeing him. Not sure of what to do, he stood there for a second and then turned his back, walking away.

“Douglas Fernand Eiffel, you get the hell your ass back here right this instant!” She yelled, and it was Eiffel’s turn to be shocked, awed, and a little bit outraged. 

Not even he knew his own name that well.

He turned around, facing this gorgeous woman and mysterious child. Slowly, he and the woman walked towards each other, until he could see her, inches away from him, tears silently streaming down her face.

“My name is Kate Garcia, and how dare you pretend not to know me. How dare you walk around holding the hand of my daughter. How dare you live in this town, on this planet, as the same time as me. You’re sickening. What is wrong with you?” She asked, accent flaring up as her tears continued to fall.

Douglas knew that name from somewhere. He desperately racked all of his memories to try and find the Kate, and then it clicked. This wasn’t her daughter. It was their daughter. His beautiful bounding baby girl had turned into a confident, stronger version of herself. This was the life he had been missing out on, the person who he could have been had he not made the biggest, dumbest mistake of his life. These were the people who he had failed the most in life, and he’d had absolutely no idea.

Faced with the sudden ability to apologize, he was completely overwhelmed. He just stood there, saying nothing, thinking and feeling everything. How could he even start that? Should he sign things for the benefit of Anne or should he let Kate do that herself? 

Calm down, Doug. Just start talking.

“Hello, Kate. No matter how much I absolutely deserved that, there’s something that needs to be explained. I’m not me. Not really. I’m not the terrible drunken mess who ruined your life. Well, I am, but.. Gah. Okay.” He took a deep breath in. 

“My name is Douglas Fernand Eiffel, yes. I still have the body of him. I still talk like him. Sometimes, I act like him. I don’t drink like him, though. When I ruined both of your lives, I went to jail. And I deserved it. I deserved so much worse than jail because you had good lives and I took that from you. I can never be sorry enough. I will never regret a single thing more than I regret what I did that night. But there’s no taking it back. Anyways, I’ve gotten off track. I went to jail for what I did. I served some time. I thought I would die in that jail. But, one day, someone came to get me. They told me that they had already gotten the right paperwork for me to come to work with them, in one of their remotest outposts. 7.8 light years away, to be precise. I was rocketed off into space, and every instance of my criminal record was erased. They never wanted me to get back to Earth. Your case was largely forgotten.” Eiffel took a deep breath. He could tell that Kate was getting mad, and that wasn’t what he wanted.

“That’s not the point either. When I was up there, something terrible happened and in order to.. Well, that doesn’t matter. The point is, my entire mind was erased. I don’t know why I still know how to speak English, or how to move, or how to use radio technology, but I do. All of my episodic memories are gone. I don’t remember anything other than what I recorded in my logs. And I’m sorry. I want to find some way to make it up to you. If that means getting the hell out of dodge and never seeing Anne, I’m fine with that. If it takes vast sums of money, paperwork, and legal disputes, I’m fine with that. I just need you to know that my one single goal in life is to make up for what I did to you. I’d do anything to know I helped.” He finished.

Kate didn’t look entirely convinced. She eyed Eiffel suspiciously, holding Anne closely in towards her. Slowly, she set her little girl down, turned so that they were facing one another, crouched down, and signed the entire story towards Anne. Douglas couldn’t see either of their faces so he couldn’t tell how either of them felt about it. After a few minutes, Anne turned towards him, and he could see that both of the girls were crying silently. 

Anne took a few shaky steps towards Eiffel, looking profoundly conflicted. Nobody knew how to feel in the situation.

 _Nice to meet you,_ she signed. 

_Nice to meet me,_ he replied.

Anne looked at her mother, then at her father, then at her shoes. She looked at Kate, then threw a defiant look at her mother, and ran towards Eiffel with her arms open wide. 

Doug Eiffel embraced his child.

**Author's Note:**

> That sure was a thing, wasn't it.


End file.
